# The plural of person is corporation,

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/02/14/the-plural-of-person-is-corporation/
- Published: 2016-02-14T06:01:01+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

_or people._ If we pretend otherwise we’ll continue to fail in admitting the new
player in our society, a long lasting one that we should both fear and control.

You know, corporations are people. This guy is right, but for the wrong reason:

It is not because “everything corporations do, goes back to people”, the audience
laughs so hard at that one, it is because we have laws on top of laws that state
loud and clear that corporations are _persons_, _and we confuse persons with people_!
These laws go back to the Roman Empire and there is a decent logic behind their 
existence.

Yet, corporations basically don’t exist and we play pretend all of our life that
such a thing as an imaginary person offers us milk, or honey, or cars or sometimes
even tap water. This is crazy. There are groups of people who work so some of this
stuff gets to us.

In reality, corporations are not something you can neither put your finger on, nor
grab. It is amazing how many times people _blame_ corporations, how many times people
_praise_ corporations, how many time people _fight_ corporations and so on.

Here is the main problem we should tackle instead:

#### Mens sana in corpore sano

### Corporations are incorporated persons.

#### Anima sana in corpore sano

### People are animated persons.

#### Incorporated persons are imaginary creations of humanity so that certain human activities become manageable. Animated persons are creations of nature so that life continues to exist in an unpredictable universe. Seriously, capitalism should be far more humanist than it is.

This idea that a company is a person with legal rights and obligations has got people
really confused. In the movie “Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain” I think the last shot 
is about how United Carbide never appologised. United Carbide, now Dow, cannot apologize,
because it doesn’t have the living experience required for apologizing. United Carbide
can only pay, and the sole problem is that it paid too little.

Here is a map of what a corporation is versus what people are:

    ```
    People                      Corporation--------------------------------------------------Thrive                      GrowLegacy                      ContinuityMeaning                     ProfitGlobetrotter                MultinationalTalented                    InnovativeCaring                      InvolvedCommunion                   Social ResponsibilityOpen minded                 Forward looking
    ```

### Corporations need to grow, people need to thrive.

The idea that management, employees, stock holders are just minions of this giant
that tells them what to do, and that we as citizens should solve our matters with
the giant, instead of the people who run it, it is essentially disturbing.

If corporations are people, should they be able to marry and adopt children? With
the rise of A.I. will the lack of physicality of corporations finally cease to exist,
as they will get a voice through software robots and possibly in fifty years maybe
physical robots?

Corporations are, when regarded as people, actual real life Gods, or at least super
people. It is because they are served by thousands of followers. They are not sleeping,
they live for hundreds of years. They are in multiple places at once. They have 
super human clout or influence.

Their voice is louder than any human’s. If a corporation commercially invests in
promoting an idea, it will be hundred of times more effective than a genius Nobel
prize winner.

Corporations don’t feel pain. They don’t feel hunger. They don’t have parents suffering
for their failure or their disease. Corporations can become so complex that their
ownership is takes basically a super investigation to uncover. In this sense they
have their own will, but unlike our will, they have no kinds of attachments, no 
higher goals, no moral compass inside.

### The state must ensure the corporation’s mind is sane and the human’s heart is healthy.

When i’m, in any way, harmed by a corporation, I can indeed sue a deep pocket. But,
God, is that hard. One could argue that suing a rich person is not much easier. 
The more resources your enemy has, the harder your fight will be. But with an invisible
enemy, a body-less possibly eternal imaginary being, it is a lot harder. There is
no eyes to look into, no hand to hold, no ear to hear your crying, no wife to soften
a husband, no child to ask why. It is a lot harder to get what you’re owed by a 
corporation.

In this respect, corporations should be oriented towards social service, by default.
In reality, the goal of a corporate entity is to have people eager to interact with
it. A corporation builds that eagerness, which is a form of response to willingness,
by propaganda which is nothing less than the promise of delivering a better future
and brands which are nothing more than shiny gift wrapping against the promise of
delivering core human values. It doesn’t matter if the corporate entity is a church
or an oil behemoth. Jesus is as much of a brand as Shell is.

The only way to approach such an idea of social service as the main goal for any
corporate entity is to introduce a negative price for social responsibility performance
in the stock markets. Not fines and class action suits. Not inspectors and permit
withdrawals.

Shoulds. Corporations should not be fought against because they don’t exist. Corporations
should be integrated in society. They should have education applied so they’re civil.
They should be ingrained since birth with a moral compass, just like we, the other
persons, are born with one.

A greater care should be awarded to life itself. For example, more and more companies
tend to phase out the human support and customer service. The problem is not one
of a luddite nature. The problem is that when you have a serious and urgent matter,
or when your service is bad, you can neither argue with, nor explain to a robot 
voice that tells you what number to push. Also, corporations can legally do the 
following:

 * you file a complaint
 * they call you and gather information
 * you never hear back
 * another person calls you and asks the same questions again
 * you never hear back
 * you get the wrong answer to your complaint
 * you file a more angry complaint
 * the corporation denies service, by “mistakenly” canceling your contract

By not charging you the corporation is free of liability, but as a “consumer” person,
there should be a price paid for the days of your limited life wasted because of
the corporation. Since such minute trials cannot be efficient, we should have laws
so that corporations externalize their internal complaints to state authorities 
and other laws that keep decent human customer service in place. Just as, for example,
in most civilized cities you cannot build offices if you cannot provide parking,
in the same way you should not be allowed to scale business if you cannot provide
customer support.

But that is just an example. In reality countless examples happen every day. Are
we doing anything about it?

Between fully socialist and fully liberal societies you have to choose who will 
be your invisible handler, the “default” care taker, the secular God: government
agencies or corporations. This is a profoundly non human attempt at common good.
It is funny that neither approach allows the individual to thrive.